AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The NBA finals are heating up, with Oklahoma City and Indiana on the court tonight for Game 4 of their championship series. Meanwhile, the NBA's Basketball Africa League will crown its champion this weekend in Pretoria, South Africa. Teams from Angola and Libya are playing in the final game tomorrow. The league is now in its fifth year and catching on with fans, as Elliot Hannon reports from South Africa.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: This is BAL's semifinals, and the action starts now
ELLIOT HANNON: When the semifinals of the BAL tipped off this week, the showmanship around the game felt like an NBA arena. During player introductions, flames burst from beneath the scoreboard as teams from Libya and Angola limbered up.
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HANNON: At halftime, acrobats cartwheeled across the floor, and as the game heats up in the second half, a dozen drummers pound away from the upper deck.
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HANNON: This, of course, is what the NBA does best and what it promised when it chose Africa as the home to its first league outside the U.S. - showmanship but with local flare. Something that didn't just feel like an American knockoff, says Kita Matungulu, NBA Africa's director of basketball operations.
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KITA MATUNGULU: You know, it comes with drum, fanfare, energy and passion, you know, typically an African style, you know? So it's basketball, but you can sense that this is a little bit - have its own feels, touch and smell.
HANNON: To help create that culture on the court, the teams themselves are taken from existing national leagues across the continent. They are mostly made up of local players and others from across Africa. The league is organized differently than the NBA. In the BAL, teams qualify to compete in the three-month tournament in addition to their regular schedule. Since its start, teams from more than two dozen countries have competed. During that time, the play on the court has improved as the league has gotten more established. The level is now closer to the G League, the NBA's minor league. But while the on-the-court product is important, attracting new African fans requires more effort, says BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall.
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AMADOU GALLO FALL: Yes, we want to have the best basketball played on the court, but at the same time, there's an opportunity to showcase our music, our fashion, our culinary, and just young people from Africa.
HANNON: The business of the BAL, however, remains a work in progress. The league has big-name investors like President Barack Obama and former NBA players. The BAL was valued at over a billion dollars in 2021, but it's also losing millions each year. To be successful, the league needs to attract young Africans that may be more consumers of American pop culture than they are basketball fans. Fans like Lehlogonolo Mamabolo (ph), a 29-year-old teacher from Pretoria, who's standing in the concourse, taking selfies with friends in front of a BAL banner.
LEHLOGONOLO MAMABOLO: I'm not huge into American sports but obviously following teams like the LA Lakers.
HANNON: Mamabolo says he has never been to a game before, but likes what he sees from the BAL.
MAMABOLO: The way they infuse, like, African - like, you see the guys playing drums outside, and now, like, everything's going on. It's very cool in that sense. It is definitely a vibe. It is - I'm having a great time.
HANNON: Now that the NBA has been successful creating that BAL vibe, the next task is turning Mamabolo and his generation into fans.
For NPR News, I'm Elliot Hannon in Pretoria.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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